Come September, the pro-democracy forces (primarily liberals, libertarians, and social democrats) will crush the pro-Beijing fascists (generally very right-wing and run by big business, Beijing insiders, and loony social conservatives) in Hong Kong, and come December, the pro-China traitors (the same Apartheid-artists responsible for the oppression of the Taiwanese Han majority during the period of martial law. These people were fascists who fled China during the CCP conquest, treated the native Taiwanese and Aboriginals like second-class citizens, and now want to surrender Taiwan to China to further their ambitions for power and to help their corporate buddies wanting to have an easier time exploiting Chinese workers. They're also involved with the same international organisation as the GOP, the Conservative Party of Canada, and the Liberal Party of Australia.) will get crushed by a pro-Taiwan coalition of the centre-left in Taiwan's legislative elections.

Right-Wing and China-oriented, the Pan-Blue camp includes the Kuomintang (the party of Chiang Kai-shek), the People First Party (a far-right party that splintered off the KMT), and the New Party (a Mainlander lander with policies that border on fascism).

The Kuomintant is currently the most moderate of the three parties, due mainly to the fact that a sizable minority of its members are Taiwan-oriented as opposed to China-oriented. The Kuomintang is now a fairly typical centre-right party, with pro-big business, anti-labour, and socially conservative policiesies. Its leader, Lien Chan, was born on Taiwan and raised in China. Thus, some view him as a Mainlander, while others associate him more with Taiwan. The KMT, led by Lee Teng-hui, easily won the 1996 election but finished third in the 2000 election, with much of its Taiwan-oriented support going for the Democratic Progressive Party and much of its China-oriented support going for the People First Party.

The People First Party is more reactionary Kuomintang splinter party that split in response to former Kuomintang chairman and Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, a Hakka rather than a Mainlander, and the direction they felt he was leading the party. Led by popular former Taiwan Province (a term for the rural parts of Taiwan that excludes the country's major cities and their surrounding counties) governor James Soong, known for playing a major role in the crackdown on anti-KMT freedom fighters during the 70s and early 80s, the PFP nearly won the 2000 election.

The New Party isn't really a pan-Blue party, and is more or less a resting place for bitter Mainlanders who still have dreams of reconqueing China (rather than joining it under the One Country Two Systems model supported by the rest of the right) and building a totalitarian Chinese state consisting of China, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Tibet. In other words, they are the CCP with a different coat of paint.

Pan-Green:

Includes the centre-left and fairly Taiwan-oriented Democratic Progressive Party, the centrist and radically pro-Taiwan Taiwan Solidarity Union, and the more-or-less dead Taiwan Independence Party, whose support has gone almost entirely to the TSU.

DPP:

The DPP has its roots in the activists of the 1970s and 1980s who advocated for an end to KMT's totalitarian one-party rule, a distinct Taiwanese indentity, and more progressive government policy. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bien, who squeaked into power in 2000 and into re-election in 2004, was a successful Taiwanese lawyer who rode the KMT machine through law school, easily finishing in the top of his class. Chen had no love for the KMT, and used it simply as a stepping stone into the legal field. Chen did a lot of work as a human rights lawyers (although I believe he originally specialised in maritime law) and defended most of the anti-KMT radicals during government crackdowns against them. Among these radicals is current Vice President Annette Lu. The DPP has softened its stance against China and for a Taiwan-oriented identity over the 1990s and the 2000s.The Hoklo-dominated DPP (most of the radicals who would go on to form it were middle-to-upper-class Hoklo intellectuals and students) has increasingly been making in roads in the Hakka and Abroiginal communities, once solidly blue due to the KMT's bribing of Aboriginal chiefs and and exploitation of past (long before even the Chinese Civil War) tension between Hoklo Hans and Hakka Hans. Many believe that Lee Teng-hui, himself a Hakka, has been a key reason for growing pan-Green support among the Hakka.

TSU:

While somewhat more moderate on domestic issues (as it descends primarily from a fringe radical pro-Taiwan faction that initially operated within the KMT), the TSU, whose strongest supportrt is former KMT President and spiritual TSU leader Lee Teng-hui, expelled from the KMT over the party's disappointing 2000 election, is an extremely pro-Taiwan and anti-China party advocating openly for Taiwanese independence, a renaming of Taiwan from the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan and a radical reform of the ROC/Taiwanese constitution, currently a heavily amended version of the ROC constitution circa the Chinese Civil War. (Constitutional reform was also an importan plank of the DPP's platform.) The TSU is growing somewhat wary of the DPP's moderation on issues of Taiwanese solidarity and identity, but the Pan-Green Camp is in no danger of unravelling any time soon, as there is actually far more tension within the KMT and between the KMT and the PFP.

In the 2004 election, which the Pan-Greens won by 30,000 of the over 12,000,000 votes cast, the Pan-Greens ran the incumbent Chen-Lu ticket while the Pan-Blues ran a "dream ticket" of Lien Chan and James Soong. (The consequences were similar to those of the Canadian Alliance-Progressive Conservative merger and proved that 1+1 is not equal to 2, as Lien's KMT and Soong's PFP combined for about 60% of the vote in 2000.)

What does mainland China do? They've already made some pretty bold threats regarding Taiwanese independence, and with our military stretched to the limit, I don't think the US will be able to use a show of force like they did under Clinton.

Most likely, they tell us to piss off and mind our own business while trying to pound Taiwan into submission economically & through a show of force.

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